[Adger Smith]

In the 44 years of doing this engine building I have seen pumps break off a few times. I don't think any of them were the pumps fault. I've seen pumps used after a catastrophic engine failure fall off from being cracked and the builder did not inspect it, or toss it just in case there was a strike or problem. I've seen them fall off because of the engine going into sever detonation. There the problem is the tune or the tuner. I have seen a lot of them subject to failure that we tossed out upon tear down of the engine. Most of them had fretting at the point they met the main cap. That fretting indicated in operation they were vibrating like a tuning fork . Most of the time I changed the balancer on an engine that had that problem and had the owner change his tune up. I usually checked the balance of the engine internals. I've also had a couple of circle track engines that had the pumps fail after a hard wreck. Again not the pumps fault. Early on the necks of most SBC and BBC pumps were weak, but that has changed quite a few years back Melling strengthened the neck of their castings.
I'm not saying they ever fail on their own, but I feel the ones that do might need a little more investigation to determine the cause instead of tossing the carnage aside and quickly placing blame.